Tomorrow is the release day for A Fistful of Kung Fu. More photos from a playtest session. At that time I was trying to create thematic squads to kill my enemies, but in vain because misfortune struck my dice rolling. We tweaked the rules but I lost 4 games that day!

We were in the ARSM headquarters. And this one is my jade mummy, moving slowly towards enemies. Too slowly, damn! Years ago I saw a real jade mummy in an exhibit in Rome. Very impressive.

You can recreate scenes from action movies like Enter the Dragon, Kill Bill, Big Trouble in Little China, Crouching Tiger – Hidden Dragon, and Hard Boiled. Here we try a mixture of ancient China tales and HK police stories. As the Osprey blurb says, “A Fistful of Kung Fu is set in a modern world walking a precarious line between the advances of next-generation technology and the tradition and mysticism of ancient cultures. Kung Fu schools face off in no-holds barred martial arts tournaments. Evil corporations hire hitmen and infiltrators to steal each other’s secrets. Overworked SWAT teams respond to street-level gunfights between feuding Triad and Yakuza clans. Ancient artefacts are sought by hopping vampires and cyborgs alike, each seeking to harness the power of the Four Dragon Kings and control the world. Bullets, punches, kicks and throwing stars fly in slow motion as martial arts heroes and gun-wielding cops defeat enemy after enemy in the pursuit of evil masterminds”.

In this game we created a scenario with a small bamboo grove. Characters can walk over them, use them as trampolines or as weapons.

Possible factions range from Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza to Ninja clans, martial arts schools, the men and women of the Hong Kong Police Department, demons, secret societies and almost anything else you can imagine! All struggle for supremacy – destroying the surroundings in the process.

Here the final struggle among our two rival groups. I didn’t score severe wounds to my opponents. Oh at least I tried.

Another game and another setting: more storeys for our houses and a venerated Buddha statue (bought on the same day in a local Chinese trinkets shop…) with an ancient treasure at its feet.

When we develop a game we never have the right miniatures or appropriate terrain. We use what we find because we have too many projects and we don’t have the time to build a pretty scenery. When we publish something we are just in the middle of another new project and another new setting. So no Chinese houses or modern urban hells but some ruined buildings instead.

In A Fistful of Kung Fu, mooks and supporting cast are swatted like flies, but can still be dangerous when given the advantage of numbers or automatic weaponry. Based on the popular Ganesha Games rules system, these rules introduce martial arts combat with manoeuvres that have different outcomes depending on the degree of success, and which allow for counter-attacks when they fail, giving a flowing, appropriate combat system. The game also includes rules for challenges and “gun-fu” stunts. And this hero cop moves forward to glory with his automatic weapons.

A pile of corpse after his passage. At the end of the day the cops won the fight. Only the hero still standing on the battle scene. Just like the style of an HK film.

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